Design of active disturbance rejection controller for autonomous aerial refueling UAV

Atmospheric turbulence is one of important factors to affect UAV flight smoothly. To reduce the influence of atmospheric turbulence, active disturbance rejection controller is designed in this paper. Firstly, mathematical models are built for UAV movements and atmospheric turbulence. Secondly, the altitude controller and the lateral deviation controller with linear state equations are designed. Finally, the control performances of two kinds of scheme are analyzed by simulation. The conclusion is that the active disturbance rejection controller has the same tracking performance as the PID controller, and higher anti-disturbance performance than the PID controller.